The tech track works great if one falls into line and doesn't rock the boat by questioning authority or trying to see the big picture. If one clings to original teenage fantasies like the idea that intellectual prowess and financial success eventually bring esteem and a social life. If one chooses to avoid becoming mired in dead end physical labor jobs like everyone else, even for a time, in worship of their own cleverness.

But should the unthinkable happen, say, the loss of a loved one due to a hyper focus on work, or witnessing one's work being used to take from others, or waking up one day to find oneself disillusioned with the direction tech is going, then suddenly tech loses its luster. One starts to recognize it for what it is - just another way to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few.

Tech has come to symbolize sheltering from reality, like a state sanctioned drug. It's a way to pat oneself on the back and downplay the wisdom of those outside it. Blindly worshipping it to the exclusion of the other wonders of life is the surest way I know to separate oneself from the soul, other than money perhaps.

In good conscience, I must add that the vast majority of tech today is phantom tech, not real tech. It serves to entertain and distract rather than be a labor-saving device. So in that sense, it's understandable that people invested in solving anything except any real problem have a disdain for the plight of labor.

Is this true?

I thought senior engineers were expected to push back as a matter of course, and staff engineers were expected to think in broad, business needs and translate that down to the code.

An engineer who just shuts up and writes code, is so we are told, the first casualty in the age of AI.

I agree with you, that the best engineers weigh the business needs when working towards a solution.

But I've also seen how the top problem solvers rarely get promoted beyond a certain level. A lot of us got into this to change the world, but ended up settling at middle management.

It's kind of a learned helplessness. It's strange to see the best and brightest commanded by people who aren't necessarily dumb, they just view the work as almost a sunk cost rather than something that pays dividends if done right. So there's this constant constraining of ideas that rubs off on us and gradually diminishes our light. Until eventually we're just another cog in the machine, showing up day after day only to keep things running and not rock the boat. And making up stories about how critical we are to the process without seeing our own expendability.

It's sad to say, but we're about to get tossed out and replaced by AI. I don't think that rising above being code monkeys is going to save us.

So on that note, we're also about to get radicalized. Imagine spending one's entire life in discipline learning the most esoteric knowledge, hoping to get ahead someday, only to find out that there wasn't enough time. Having to watch the most vacuous blowhards become millionaires at the highest levels of power and casually destroy everything we worked towards.

Plus, at the risk of too much head-shrinking, I've never gotten the impression that tech workers liked each other very much. There's a lot of disdain in the industry, for the guy who uses that language or framework or operating system that I think sucks. You don't see that so much with, say, truckers. There may be some good-natured rivalry based on truck brands or long-haul versus short-haul, but not the real disdain you see in tech.

I could join and try to influence them, but if I was good at that sort of thing, I probably wouldn't have been a software developer in the first place.

Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having substantial capital investments alongside labor income, making them, in class terms, petit bourgeois or at least close enough to it to perceive their own interests in more bourgeois than proletarian terms. And even the tech workers that are clearly part of the proletarian intelligentsia tend see themselves (rightly or wrongly) on a path that leads into the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois interests.

Working class: you are sustained by your current labor.

Upper class: you can sustain yourself based on the returns from your investments more-or-less indefinitely.

Middle class, between the two: you can sustain yourself off your investments for so long that you can’t practically be threatened by unemployment.

It is a labor relations issue explicitly, you need a union if you are in the first of the three classes, because otherwise you can be threatened by unemployment to do something dangerous or dehumanizing.

In the middle class definition, practically there’s some element of the fact that our skills are in high demand, so you can become unthreatened by unemployment by having just, like, a 1 year buffer. But I do think we can overstate how in-demand our skills to satisfy our egos…

If you have to think about which one you are you are working class. At a stretch you might consider the owner of a small tech company (say 5-10 employees) as petit bourgeoisie but the vast majority of small business owners (say mechanics, shop owners, small companies) are squarely in the working class. They may have employees but they still work, either for wages or as managers of those employees - which is work.

The middle class (petit bourgeoisie) is real, but its not centered around middle income (it is middle in the sense of being between the dominantly capital-dependent class and the dominantly labor-dependent class, primarily in how it relates to the economy, but in practice also on average, in income and wealth, but it is still an elite minority, just less so than the haut bourgeoisie that sits at the top.)

I like the definition I provided because it seems functional to me; it describes classes with labor-capital relationships, and describes how the incentives influence their behavior.

What I don't like about the middle class definition is that it is to my mind just a subset of the working class but designed to drive a wedge between people who should be looking out for each other. It has the effect of attempting to align working class people with super rich capitalists. Interesting that "middle class" was the original name for the capitalists who were between the working class and the nobility, now we pretend that the middle class are working class adjacent.

One definition I found reasonable was that it it "starts" with those that can meet their basic necessities (housing, food, transportation, healthcare) and still have funds left over for discretionary spending:

* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin...

Where it "ends" at top-end is perhaps more arbitrary (not Top 10%? 20%? 1%?).

Like if you by groceries, rent an apartment, have a bus pass, qualify for Medicare, and you have a Netflix account or get fast food (discretionary spending), then you seem to be middle class by this definition. Is that right? Maybe Medicare bumps you out. But ok, you can get the cheapest marketplace plan.

I mean, to be below middle class by this definition your expenses have to exactly match your revenue, or you are living beyond your means. So other than some tiny slice (in some perimeter vs area sense) of the populace, being working class seems to be definitionally unsustainable.

Middle-class is a spectrum like being "rich" is.

This would put a trader earning $3m/yr as working class. That’s fine I guess, but then we need another distinction, for the difference between that person and a minimum wage worker.

Now in all the conversations where we would say “working class” we use this new term, because we almost always mean things relating to income level rather than labour vs owner.

And so all we’ve done is changed the name for “working class”

You can be rich working class. If you acquire enough capital where you no longer work and just deploy your capital you are no longer working class.

At the very least the second camp is the only one that can effectively vote with their wallets, Poorer and you can't afford the better alternatives, richer and you have better means of influence (Or deal with things that are low volume and less price sensitive)

The difference is public policy. Owning property in the US absolutely elevates you to a higher privileged status above renters. How many homeowners were being evicted from their homes after missing a couple mortgage payments during the pandemic? Precisely zero. While thousands of renters in red states had the sheriff at their throats within 60 days. That's all you need to know about class in this country.

different circumstances are treated differently?

Yes, exactly. My entire point is that owning a home is nothing like renting, even if you're spending the same amount, and is treated as a privileged status.

Ethan Hunt play by Tom Cruise and Waitress #2 played by Jane Doe aren't very homogeneous with regards to pay and fame, but they're both part of SAG.

not only would the collective provide benefits to the individual workers, but it would serve as an (optional) form of licensure/credentialing that ensures each member has a baseline level of competence. it could make hiring so much easier if you could skip the fizzbuzz screening rounds by pulling from a pool of vetted talent.

As a union member (not SAG-AFTRA), I find this curious. SAG-AFTRA is a Union. They have a cool name but, like many other groups with Guild in their name, they are recognized by the NLRB as a Union. There's no special classification for Guild, at least in America.

When you look at Wikipedia's list of largest unions in the US, only 2 of the top 10 have Union in their name, but that doesn't mean the other 8 aren't actually Unions. Or that the ones with Brotherhood in their name don't allow women, or any other silly extrapolation one wants to concoct. It's just a name.

We're not in the 13th century any more. There is no longer any functional difference between Guild and Union. Of the alleged benefits of Guilds enumerated in HN threads (vetting and certification of members, continuing education, ability to be paid above scale, etc), literally every single one is already offered by unions today. And if you thought of a new one that wasn't, you could bring it up at your next union meeting and vote on it.

It's frustrating to read discussions of unions by online commenters who have never been union members or paid dues, never read a union contract, never attended a union meeting or voted with their coworkers, never worked similar jobs in both union and non-union workplaces. It's like a bunch of people who have never lived in a free society arguing over whether they should form a Democracy or a Republic, by picking countries with these words in their names, and selecting attributes of those countries they do or don't want to emulate. That's not how it works.

EDIT: another commented mentioned that NBA players are also unionized. I think there is a second element to it, which has to do with how monopolized the employer market is.

But what does Tom Cruise get out of it? He certainly does not need a union to get his wage, pension and benefits.

Is this a solidarity with other, less known actors? Prestige? Something else?

[0] https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits

1. Heterogeneity/homogeneity of labour.

2. Tight/lose labour market.

I think Argument 1 is the weaker argument. There's a lot of fungibility between software roles. However, there's a higher learning cost. Moving to a new software company requires a few months before someone is close to full productivity. This in contrast between a painter moving from a Ford supplier to a GM supplier will likely close to full productivity within a few weeks. The cost (to the employer) is lower to rehire someone.

Argument 2 is the stronger argument, but may not be forever. In a tight labour market, I see very little need for unions. If the marginal worker can (and will) leave their position for a better position (pay, benefits, culture, etc), I see little need for unions. However, if the labour market for software engineers shifts in favor of businesses, this will change rapidly.

Also, their output is relatively easy to measure and stand arise.

This is not true for programmers, making standard pay increase for programmers less useful as a target. What would be measured? Hours in office? Commits? Lines of code?

The wealthy class makes multiples of your salary in passive income and their marginal tax rate is lower. You work and fork over 40%. They do nothing and pay 15% or less.

You put your retirement money into a 401k. They put their retirement money into a “charitable foundation”.

You draw down from your retirement money. They take a loan against it.

What’s the difference between a billionaire and a meat packing worker? Billions of dollars.

What’s the difference between a billionaire and a faang engineer? Also billions of dollars.

My point is simply that if you are 1 of 50,000 in a meat processing plant, you do not really have any way of competing with your fellow workers. You might try to work harder and faster, but then you end up raising the bar for all, and you now have to maintain the new pace. And once the rest catch up with your pace, the pay for all will be lowered again.

In tech, every job is slightly different, and there is a real opportunity to meaningful differentiate yourself from the rest and compete in a much more dynamic job market.

Also, who are the ones hurting currently? The juniors or the seniors? Seniors are mostly doing fine. Juniors are the ones hurting. And juniors would have an even harder time, if you transitioned to a unionized system, because entry requirements would be raised significantly to account for the fact that you cannot fire people so easily.

Of course nothing rings as hollow as someone who works from home or a beautiful office, sits in a comfortable chair and works by typing on a keyboard complaining about the struggles of the working class.

Structurally we are more similar than different, even if tech workers have had it good for the last while.

If you find that you are not aggrieved at the world then most likely you are in a privileged bubble

Oh, I wasn't aware of that. Does not seem to apply to me though.

If you make a cushy salary and the biggest physical risk is carpal tunnel, you might think ”I dont have it THAT bad. It’d be greedy and disrespectful of the sacrifices that were made to use unions in my situation”

Just do not be surprised that people run away from ideas (even reasonable ones) when associated with such beautiful terms as "class traitor".

I don't know or care which class I am betraying.

Just because you don't feel it, doesn't mean the exploitation doesn't exist.

I do not see them as the same class as me.

I have never felt exploited, but I HAVE enormously benefited from German corporations.

Since the poster above seems to be German, he especially should know.

The only reason the conservative Bismarck established the German welfare state was to stave off revolution.

The only means through which capitalists give even an inch is through that threat. That's why worker rights are being rolled back in a lot of places right now - because workers have become soft.

This is a lie.

Poland and many areas occupied by Russia managed to end Russian control without this.

It was not a case of waiting until foreign powers did it. (though there was a bit of external help)

Doing it with no bloodshed typically accompanying such events was even better.

Russia was not friend to workers, it was oppressive evil state and kicking it out (what started steps toward collapse of USSR) was one of greatest successes in the history of Poland.

It was no accident that largest strikes in the history of country taken place during PRL and capitalism is so well regarded in Poland.

As a German I know that the only attempt at an anti-communist uprising was met with swift brutality by the troops of the pro-capitalist social democratic government.

As a German I know how a country divided between anti-capitalism and capitalism looks like after many decades. I have seen the ruins of anti-communism with my own eyes, they are hard to hide and so are the crimes of the anti-communist government.

As a German I know that besides national socialism, anti-capitalism is also an illegal ideology in Germany.

You posted 19 comments since then, most of which are perpetuating this flamewar. No matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are, this is abusive, and we ban accounts that do it.

Fortunately, it looks like your comment history is mostly fine (at least the parts of it that I skimmed back through) so this should be easy to fix.

if treated seriously, that just makes "violence" a meaningless term

for start, there is a difference between threats of violence and actual violent acts for example

Just because you don't like being made aware of the violence committed by your preferred system doesn't make it less violent.

Here's the definition according to the Cambridge dictionary:

> actions that are intended or likely to hurt people or cause damage

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/violence

Please enlighten me as to why it doesn't apply.

If you do not think that is violence, I'd love to hear what qualifies in your mind.

If you'd please stop creating accounts to abuse HN like this, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have never been to a politician's dinner. I have never changed a law. If I were fired, which can be done at any time for no reason, I would have no source of income. Money is the weakest form of power, and a well-paid job is the weakest form of money.

unions in the past are portrayed as remove physical dangers, limiting to reasonable hours and fair wages. but tech workers already have that stuff, so they don't see an upside.

codetermination (getting workers on the board), four day work weeks, full-time remote, sabbaticals, open source support, rethinking startup equity, ... there's all sorts of things we could be pushing for that would make our jobs better that we could to push for if we worked together.

I don't know about you but I don't make anything even remotely close to six figures...

It is still labor and we are still exploited - most the revenue we generate goes to capitalist interests, not us, the laborers, which are the creators of all revenue.

It's just that we have it comparatively good and so are less inclined to seek out systemic change - a less favorable reading would be that we are bought off to split us off from the rest of the proletariat.

While software developers just starting out are apt to be working class, when you receive a comparatively high income for your labor it soon becomes hard to find things to do with it if you don't start investing in land/capital, so one in that position doesn't stay working class for long.

It’s not virtue signaling. There are material gains that could be made by organizing. Layoff protection and the power to set company direction are two big ones that come to mind.

It’s okay to want to unionize for selfish reasons. In fact, I think it’s borderline propaganda to suggest the only reason a wealthy person would organize is because of their own class guilt.

You seem to be claiming that empathy is always “hollow” but I think this is at most a statement about you. Many people can be both well off and want to make things better for others. Not everyone, for sure, not enough maybe. But attacking people for showing empathy seems weird.

It sounds much better for them to be on the team of all workers rather than the other team, or to be out of the game entirely.

(1) demanded flat payment increases for all workers based on seniority etc. Which may make sense for factory workers but I am not enthusiastic about flat rates for programmers not taking into account actual experience/availability/output etc.

Factory workers in many cases do job that can be easily rated and measured and do some specific amount of it.

While measuring output of programmers is notoriously hard.

I expect that union agreement of this kind would in fact benefit only lazy freeloaders not doing any work but having seniority.

(2) are guilds that existed to keep jobs for members and to outlaw or ban hiring outsiders.

I strictly prefer for exclusionary guilds to not exist and one of my big worries is that one would be setup, in area affecting me. One way or another, not necessarily an obvious self-naming itself as a guild.

(3) are gangs existing to steal public money - for example, see coal miners in Poland. Main union achievements was to steal billions of public money to help lazy freeloaders doing work that was not worth doing or outright harmful.

I do not support theft, also in terms of parasiting on public resources. Even if I would get some of proceeds of theft.

(4) intended to achieve more free days, flexibility etc. On my freelancing agreements I sacrificed large part of earning to get about 100+ free days a year, very significant flexibility where and how and on what I work. So this part is achieved for me - and I am not sure how many other tech workers would actually prefer more free time over being paid more.

I am not automatically against unions for tech workers but my first reaction and assumption is not that it will be positive or useful for me.

Do you think I would join an organization like that? There is a clear conflict of interest between blue and white color workers and the more numerous blue color workers push the union to prioritize them.

this is a bizarre simplification, sounding like some kind of silly propaganda

I am well aware of enemies not fitting into such labeling at all (and probably there are more less obvious ones)

Soccer hooligan vandals.

Corrupt local politicians.

Some vandals obsessed with damaging community-run geodata collection project.

People who thing that overregulating everything in Europe is an exciting adventure and we should have more of it.

Climate change deniers, people misunderstanding vaccines and in effect trying to resurrect diseases that were extinct locally.

People with Saruman-like approach to trees.

Coal miners parasiting on billions from public funds to fund coal mining (as selling coal does not allow to pay for it, at least with how much they are paid for it).

I realize that many other users have been doing this as well, but each HN commenter needs to stick to the intended use of the site regardless of what others are doing.

Fortunately, it looks like your comment history is mostly fine (at least the parts of it that I skimmed back through) so this should be easy to fix.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If Factory workers longer and more efficiently my job becomes more secure. So obviously I want a union which advocates that factory workers work longer hours, it is clearly in my interest. The same goes for strikes, if factory workers strike they endanger my job and reduce the size of the engineering department, reducing my chances to get promoted.

>Get rid of them and there'll be plenty of money for both of you.

The unions? Sure, if they were gone things would become better.

They do! What doesn't resonate with many tech workers is working together with other people. Tech workers are largely used to working alone, and many even struggle in social situations more-so than in other industries, so when a labor issue arises they believe it is a problem they must solve on their own.

Industries with significantly higher economic status and autonomy are all over unions (sports, entertainment, politics, medicine, etc.), so that doesn't really explain it.

Prior to that I was a military commander as a Major in the United States Air Force

Before joining the AF I had jobs in construction, freelance web design and car stereo installation in high school

The singular difference is the personality of tech workers is “I can do this faster and easier by myself - I have no desire to communicate with other people”

It seems to stem from a large swath very technical people coming from isolated environments when they were children.

Specifically ones in middle to upper middle class families, where the computer was their creative outlet and they were spending more time with a computer and understanding the computer than they were other people.

They were able to get excited about and learn and get deep into a topic where you really didn’t need other people — you need to documentation you needed books and you needed time to experiment.

Almost every single other job I’ve ever worked in you *need* other people in order to make progress. That is not true for writing really small functional and precise software which is the “job” of most swe.

As a function of that the majority of SWE’s (and frankly this applies to most technical experts who have a very specific niche) have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position.

If you wanna actually make an organization that creates sustainable software, you need an entirely different way of thinking. you need to think organizationally you think you need to think about how to help people how to get things out of their way communication etc. etc. etc. all these things have nothing to do with“shipping code “

And for a lot of people who are good at programming they really genuinely could not care or have the capacity to understand about anything other than their narrow frame of view and they do not see their coworkers as part of their community they see them as competition.

This will continue to remain true so long as expected pay bumps for job-hopping outpace loyalty raises.

Well, the engineering union I was in as a student member was most interested in selling me the great credit card deals they'd negotiated for their members. They were not into any kind of "class solidarity" nationally, much less internationally. They were at best into securing good deals for their members (and not so much that they couldn't still have a VERY cozy relationship with their employer counterpart). The last straw was when they got into promoting climate denialism. So yeah, I didn't think the organization was very valuable in itself, but was I wrong?

People who don't make a lot of money struggle to afford all those things, and are worked to death despite it. They don't just have enough and want more. They literally don't have enough to live a life free of struggle.

Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers. What's a tech worker's biggest gripe? Being on-call? Not getting a bonus on top of their fat salary? The only time I've ever done a hard day's work as a tech worker was when I joined a shitty startup that was abusive with long hours. I left and joined a normal company and it was smooth sailing. The most painful part of the job is my tennis elbow, but hey, I have a corporate healthcare plan and a $1000 swivel chair. I don't see the point of a union in this environment.

Not compared to many unionized industries. Workers in professional sports and entertainment, for example, which fully embrace labor unions, make software developers look like they work for peanuts.

> Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers.

Labor unions have formed when death was actually on the horizon because death was on the horizon, but labor unions today are almost exclusively a rich man's sport. The poor aren't poor enough to face certain death, but aren't rich enough to risk the consequences of not working (i.e. striking) for beneficial-but-not-life-threatning demands, so it is not a reasonable choice for them to make. Hence why you almost never find labor unions in low paying jobs.

Tech doesn't like unions simply because, as a group, tech doesn't like people. That's what a union is, after all: A group of people who have decided to associate with each other.

I am pretty sure that union is not the most significant part why pay is high here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"We're all pretty sure of that. Where did you dream up this straw man?" is just the kind of provocation that produces that kind of discussion, though.

One thing to keep in mind is that most of us underestimate the provocation in our own posts (let's say by 10x) and overestimate the provocation in others' posts (let's say by another 10x) and that leads to quite a skew in perception [1]. I believe this is why everyone always feels like the other person started it / did worse [2]. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear! [3]

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I suspect that this drives wages high for highly paid individuals in sport and entertainment.

Note that stars in entertainment, in fields without unions also earn a lot.

Particularly this part:

> nestling comfortably alongside of the idea that "I don't need a union, I'm a temporarily embarrassed founder."

In fact they tend to be some of the most anti-union, anti-labor folks I know.

I will grant that not every single person in the "comfortable middle class suburban" category is anti-union / anti-labor, but it's a pattern I see often enough that it is worth remarking on.

When you work in a trade where you could easily be killed or injured on the job the calculus is a bit different.

Just because you likely won't be killed in a crane collapse or someone dropping a hammer doesn't mean that the workplace is safe and that working conditions are good.

But at the end of the day most people are dropping from heart disease, diabetes, obesity. Sitting 8+ hours a day is basically worse for you than smoking.

Since it’s so, so slow I think we all have the belief that surely this will not happen to us. We will not be frog boiled, because surely we will notice once we are fat and hyperventilating going up the stairs. Surely, there will be some indication and we will turn the ship around.

But looking around us, I don’t think so. Clearly people are getting frog boiled. And they get so beaten down, so worn, that eventually they do not fight it.

I've seen what you describe in Amazon - high pressure, constant thread of being fired, stress, no work/life balance, etc...

Many other jobs are different. Sure, things are inefficient, but the expectations are not very high either. You come in, do your 7 hours of work (or don't even come in if you are remote), and go home. It's pretty hard to get fired, so as long as you are putting a nominal effort, you'd be fine.

Some people are trying to get a promotion, or are just full of energy - they may work very hard, skip work/life balance and stress out. But it's all optional, if you are happy with your initial salary, you don't have to do it.

(The major annoyance with this is if you are trying to actually get things done, like ship a product, there are just _so many_ people around who seem to work very slowly, and that cannot be relied on to deliver things in time... but this is all in your head, you only stress out about this if you choose to)

Every place I have ever worked has been "up or out". Maybe 20 years ago that kind of job existed, but it does not now.

I am in embedded/robotics though, other industries may be different.

Indeed the bar is so low that even with all the bullshit in the tech industry, we seem to have it better than most- on salary alone. Throw in “full remote” (although that’s disappearing) and it really can’t be beat, even when your boss yells obscenities at you every day.

Even here in Europe salaries can match Doctors and Lawyers but the barrier to entry is much lower and in my experience employment is still based on merit more than anything.

Perhaps there's some element of "don't rock the boat" but maybe some guilt too. We really have lucked out.

Not sure how comfortable I'd feel taking union action over my job that requires me to leave the house once a week but pays 3x a teachers salary.

I don't care that much about "labour issues" because it seems like a logically flawed avenue to explore to begin with.

To be financially successful under any market system I can think of requires you, in a mathematical sense, to be close enough to the top within a company that you get a greater proportion of the profit than simply 1/employees.

In simple terms - I can't employ a maid unless I earn more than a maid, a maid can never be paid enough that I would want to be a maid (being the maid's employer, or at least having that optionality, is strictly superior).

Some jobs have comparative advantage, e.g. I might enjoy working on my car but know that a mechanic can do the same job in 1/10th the time. But a lot of stuff is just straight - I earn more than you, you do it for me, so I can get more things done.

Wages and hours for low level jobs feel like a distraction, barely anyone needs more toys, the issue is that the necessary items for life are monopolised.

So from my perspective the only thing that labour regulation can achieve is to basically just compress that experience, we still won't build more housing or make it easier to do so etc.

They’re related. Unions aren’t just labor movements, they’re efforts to reduce the power of corporations.

Monopolies form because they make a lot of sense for the people on top. Competition is cool, but mostly a fools errand. The true winners know how to work together to widen the gap between their in-group and everyone else.

What’s evident to me about market theory is that it naturally tends to monopolies. To me, it is human nature. So therefore, we need extra structures, extra systems, to keep it in check.